Government investigators armed with fake IDs and fictitious names had no trouble getting past U.S. border guards who didn't even bother to check the false papers in some cases, the General Accounting Office says.
Testing border security at the request of two U.S. senators, the investigative arm of Congress found the Immigration and Naturalization Service and U.S. Customs Service never questioned the authenticity of the counterfeit documents the investigators carried.
"Our agents encountered no difficulty entering the country using them," GAO official Robert Cramer said in prepared congressional testimony.
Cramer, managing director of the GAO's Office of Special Investigations, said the investigators created fictitious driver's licenses and birth certificates using off-the-shelf computer graphic software available to the public, and got credit cards in the fictitious names.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and the panel's ranking Democrat, Max Baucus of Montana, had requested the undercover operation.
A government source said the lax security was at Miami International Airport, which Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge is to tour Thursday; and border crossings at the San Isidro section of San Diego, across from Tijuana, Mexico; Peace Arch Park in Blaine, Wash., south of Vancouver, British Columbia; and Port Angeles, Wash., where ferry boats dock from Port Victoria, British Columbia. The flight to Miami was from Jamaica, said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The ferry boat crossing at Port Angeles, Wash., is where Ahmed Ressam, convicted of plotting a terrorist attack on Los Angeles Airport during millennium celebrations, was arrested in 1999 while trying to enter from Canada in a car full of explosives.
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